Help us build the solutions that will keep your community safe from disease
COVID-19 has forever changed how we live. Beyond COVID-19, this awareness and impact of infectious diseases is here to stay. Shared spaces where we gather to work, play, shop, and travel have emerged as the focal point of the health defense strategy. Songbird develops the solutions that make these shared spaces safer to re-enter with rapid testing and risk management tools, ensuring the health of both people and the economy. Today our focus is largely on COVID-19, but the solutions we are building will form the core strategy of how we make shared spaces safe for decades to come.
This is the singular challenge of our generation. It is our moon landing, only the stakes are far higher. We’ve built a team of passionate and talented people committed to making the world safer. It includes world-class building scientists, infectious disease experts, operations engineers, data scientists, product designers, and more. Our microscopic adversary is clever and evolving. We are meeting the challenge with a team that is equally agile and creative, and above all else, committed to the hard science that is required to succeed. Our work is not easy or boring. But it is the most important work any of us have ever taken on, and we have built a team that understands the value of having fun while doing it. Sound like a fit for you? We’d love to hear from you.
Your Role
You will be the operational leader of Songbird, bridging the key functions across the entirety of the business: sales & marketing, R&D, corporate services, and operations. The Directors leading these functional areas will form the Songbird management team that you will lead, and you will report into the CEO of the company. Your primary responsibilities will fall into 4 areas:
- Strategy Creation & Alignment: You will organize the efforts to develop the strategies to carry Songbird into the post-COVID era. You will do this in a bi-directional manner, coordinating and communicating both with the CEO/Board, as well as with the operational management team. This responsibility will demonstrate your unique ability to bridge both high-level corporate strategy, and the operational aspects of implementing these plans. Once the strategy is determined, you’ll be the champion, ensure it is communicated, understood, and acted upon throughout the company.
- Program Coordination: You will have the widest view of the company’s operations, and will coordinate delivery of key company programs (new products, new markets, etc). You’ll be responsible for ensuring that we have a well-orchestrated response across all aspects of the company and that we’re viewing the full spectrum of risks and opportunities.
- Management Team and Stakeholders: The Directors of the functional areas will report into you, and it will be up to you to build, nurture, and grow that leadership team. You will also be the key contact point for company shareholders and attend many Board meetings as the management representative.
- External Leadership: The GM and CEO both will act as the external “face” of Songbird, acting as the spokesperson for media, key contact point in strategic partnerships, and the executive who is ultimately accountable in moments of adversity.
While the above focus areas will ask you to think and act strategically, Songbird is still a small team, and you’ll be relied on to roll up your sleeves and act as a player-coach, be it in assisting on a key sales opportunity, helping develop market messaging, or handling a challenging partner negotiation.
You will be responsible for developing the budget and tracking financial performance across the entire company.
Your Work Style
Songbird is not for everybody. We’re looking for a specific type of science-minded communicator who amplifies our core value proposition and has a special ability to communicate the proposition to clientele.
You’re passionate about building a company that truly is helping to solve a massively important problem.
While Songbird has enjoyed strong growth and financial success, it is still very much a startup in other ways. You’re comfortable with the early stages of a startup that are often messy and changing quickly. You also know that high-growth startups aren’t a place for people that don’t enjoy digging in on tactical challenges. While you are a strategic thinker and team builder, you’re also willing to “sit on the floor” and do the grunt work that exists in every startup.
You’re someone who enjoys and thrives in connecting the dots in complex and changing markets to develop new strategies. And you are comfortable being the vocal and inspiring champion that can carry these strategies through the organization.
The Songbird team is remotely based across Canada and the United States. A key quality of yours will be the ability to work with, and lead, a team from a remote setting.
Your Past Experience
We’re a team that is obsessed with learning, but there are some things we hope you’ve already experienced in past roles and can bring that wisdom to the team.
- You have a track-record of leading (as GM, CEO, or a senior executive), a high-growth startup.
- You have experience building and scaling organizations with revenue of at least $10M/year.
- Experience recruiting and building executive teams, and have experience leading a group of 5+ senior managers or directors.
- You have experience managing a team budget and P&L.
- Experience working with and managing a Board and group of external investors.
- Have a working knowledge of finance, sales, operations, and product development functions.
- Experience in biotech, medical devices or pharmaceutical sales is considered an asset.
You have a Bachelor’s degree, but we are open-minded to the discipline, so long as you exhibit a natural understanding of both science and the customer.
You will often be pulled on to present to the management team or the Board, and you will be a natural communicator who can make complex topics simple, and articulate asks to the organization in a clear manner.
Salary commensurate with experience. Thank you in advance for your application. Only candidates selected for an interview will be contacted.